TOP TEN TUESDAY | Best Books With the Worst Settings

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme for bloggers who like books and lists. It's awesome and is graciously hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.


This week's Top Ten Tuesday is about place and atmosphere:

Top Ten Books With X Setting (top ten books set near the beach, top ten book set in boarding school, top ten books set in England, etc)

I decided to talk about a few books I've read recently that had settings that are just generally awful.  I mean, they're great, vivid and amazing settings to read about but in reality?  They would su-uck. I know that this is perhaps stretching the intent of this topic but these are the books that spoke to me and who am I to ignore the imaginary voices of books in my head? ;)

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1) The Passage by Justin Cronin

A U.S.A. where most of humanity has either been killed or turned into vampiric monsters that attack anything that moves in the dark.  Terrifying and awesome!

2) The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

HA!  You thought I was just going to go for post-apocalyptic? A desolate island that can barely support life and where, occasionally, carnivorous horse come out of the sea and devour people.  Charming.  Actually, Stiefvater totally made me want to live there.

3) The Round House by Louise Erdrich

This fantastic book takes place on a a modern-day Indian Reservation in one of the Dakotas.  The reservation, in many ways, is a lovely place of community but it is also a physical reminder of the terrible injustices visited upon the indigenous peoples of North America.  

4) Saga by Brian K. Vaughn 

WOW is all I can say about this Graphic Novel series but the setting is a space where war has overrun all of the planets.  It's amazing how hopeful and fun Vaughn manages to keep this story considering just how dire the setting is.  

5) The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Alaska is amazing and beautiful but it's also super dangerous and harsh especially in winter and especially when trying to homestead in the 1920s like the couple in this awesome novel is doing.  

6) Winter by Marissa Meyer

The moon.  Under an evil dictator.  It's terrible.

7) End of Days (really the whole Penryn and the End of Days series) by Susan Ee

This takes place in California.  California's nice but... not after it has been taken over by murderous, super strong Angels that can fly.

8) The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

This seems like it is set in an average, small American town until you realize that the town is surrounded by a woodland chock full of malicious fairy folk and the humans in the town are kind of bigoted jerks too. 

9) Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone

So in this world, Tara is literally thrown out of the school where she is learning Craft which happens to be floating at a great height above the ground. Then, she can't really feel comfortable when she returns home because most people revile and distrust people who practice Craft.  It's a challenging world to live in.

10) The Girl Who Circumavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Cathrynne M. Valente.  

Fairyland?  Kind of sucks.  Well it is at least kind of terrifying.  

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That's a list of my  favorite books I read in the last year which had settings that if I was transported into them, I would pretty much die immediately.  What was the best book you recently read that had the worst setting?